The Stillborn Potter Syndrome
by Azure Gryphon
Summary: The Master of Death may accept that death will take him, but that doesn't mean that death will. When they said that children are a man's future, Harry is very sure they didn't mean it like this.
1. Chapter 1: The Hospital

_The characters do not belong to me. I do however, agree that the unfortunate things happening to them are my doing. _

**The Stillborn Potter Syndrome**

Ginny screams. It's quiet in the waiting room but the sound carries clearly over the white noise and silencing wards common in Wizarding hospitals. Harry waits impatiently. He should be in the room with Ginny. He should be right beside her for their child's birth. But he's not. Evidently that's against tradition. They let him be there for little James' birth, surely they could continue to bend their stupid little Merlin cursed tradition but no. He grits his teeth as Ginny screams again. Somehow he'd done something wrong last time- upset Ginny and thus complicated the birth in some way. _She'd_ been upset? _He_ wasn't the one who'd been threatening his lover and wife with castration and a very nasty variation of the Bat-Boogey Hex. At the next scream he realizes his fingernails have drawn blood and he forces himself to unclench his fists. He can't think of any other thing he had ever hated more than this wait. Right now, he'd rather Voldemort be back if only he could be in there with Ginny. Ginny screams again- hoarse and long before tapering off. At a certain point the silencing wards cover it up again. This time a Healer opens the door and he stands excitedly. The Healer seems oddly grim for a delivery as she ushers him in to his wife's hospital bed. He looks around for the baby. Ginny is crying silently- tears trickle down her red splotched cheeks. The Healers are quiet and solemn.

He is handed the baby. The child is naked- Harry doesn't understand why they haven't cleaned him up, wrapped him in blankets. Little Albus Severus is even blotchier than his mother- red and with an oddly shaped head- is covered in blood and so very still. Harry understands then, like a bolt of lightning, the realization that his baby boy is not breathing, is not moving, is not alive. Harry staggers- nearly falls. He cradles the naked newborn to his chest. His baby boy couldn't be dead. No, he simply couldn't be. He'd been planned from the very night he was conceived- he'd been loved and talked to and wondered about and anticipated for nine long months. He was not dead, there was no way. Harry shifted the child to one hand, bringing the other- shaking and unsure- to the tiny face. He stroked a finger across the nose, a cheek, the thin little lips, the closed eyes. Harry wondered what color they were. They'd probably be blue but would they turn brown or green later? He touches a little hand that does not clasp his finger- nails tiny, paper-thin and nearly translucent, then a wrinkled little foot that doesn't clench its toes. He strokes the stomach around the umbilical cord and its barbaric looking clamp. His little boy is dead. But that wasn't right. He brings his hand up to the little face, cupping the huge head (relatively speaking)that had looked so funny on baby James. But there wasn't anything funny here. His beloved baby boy was dead, but that was wrong. The baby was meant to live. He could die, he wouldn't mind if only his baby would take a breath, would scream, would live.

The Healers were nervous. It wasn't often that they delivered a stillbirth. Usually a child would either miscarry early or be born with something obviously wrong with it and then die after. The natural magic present in both mother and child would ensure it. Usually they didn't deliver a child for the Man-Who-Had-Conquered and his wife either. Someone powerful enough that he still had accidental magic every now and again- it made the first page in newspapers every time. Yes, something that made _the_ Harry Potter mad was usually made the news anyway but the sheer power he produced when angry made it to the front page every time, often with eyewitness accounts of people who it had frightened, or with stories of what it had damaged or destroyed. They hadn't been willing to risk being the bearer of bad news so they'd handed him the tiny corpse to see for himself. So he could understand it on his own and hopefully wouldn't get riled up at the one who would have had to tell him.

It wasn't going nearly as well as they'd hoped. Mrs. Potter had understood, she was quiet and crying, but something seemed wrong with Mr. Potter. He was staring at the body like he didn't get it, touching it as though it was alive and he was trying to get it to respond. He was upset. They could feel the magic coming off him in waves. They were even starting to see it. One Healer stepped forward.

"Mr. Potter, I'm afraid your child is a stillborn… Mr. Potter?" He took another step forward. Mr. Potter didn't seem to hear him. The Healer reaches out towards the body in its father's arms. This Mr. Potter notices. The Healer flinches back, the man's eyes were glowing, his face fierce and feral with some emotion the Healer didn't recognize. His magic abruptly becomes very visible, where before it had been faint golden wisps of something like fog, now it was long, violently lashing streamers in black edged laser yellows and acid greens.

Mr. Potter speaks, "He can't be dead."

The healer musters his courage and takes another step forward, arms still outstretched. He swallows as the magic's light throws the man's wild expression into sharp relief. "I'm sorry, sir, but the baby is dead." He speaks as gently as he can. It's not gentle enough. The father of the child takes a step back; the body is drawn closer, held defensively against the man's chest. The magic is condensing into a cloud, gathering close and ever brighter around him, ready and eager to be used. "Sir," the healer takes one more step and the magic reacts explosively. With a brilliant light it smashes the bold healer against the wall, the others stagger and falling over with a great shove. Ginny's bed rolls on its little wheeled feet until it hits the wall with a crack. Ginny herself cries out in pain as she's pressed hard into the bed by the shockwave. The shockwave is very hot and then it passes, the light fading slightly. The only conscious healer left, an amateur Muggleborn Astrologist in her free time, later swears the light looks like a supernova - a bright center with colorful bands pushed away by tremendous forces. She then witnesses the magic imploding, leaving a sudden, terrible cold darkness and a thin, high baby's wail.

5/5/12


	2. Chapter 2

_My thanks to my reviewers! I'm delighted to know people are moved enough to comment._

_To:__** BYoshi1993's**__ 6/19/12 review. _

_Oddly enough I have almost no experience with children at all. With my younger siblings, I was either too young to remember their babyhoods, or was simply not there. What I do have however is a very nice Introduction to Psychology book with a fascinating section on the behaviors/ instincts of children in them. The class that the book was for was also very informative. _

_I might try some disconnected scenes of Harry's life growing up in a family with Harry Potter as a father, but I do not feel confident in my writing ability at this point to try anything novel-ish like the idea really deserves. So that will need to be put off. _

_To: __**TARDIS BLUE PROPHET's**__ 5/5/12 review. Thank you for your response. I was hoping for something like that but I hadn't expected it to work so well. _

_I hope all the readers enjoy this somewhat (very) disconnected next chapter. I look forward to hearing from you._

_Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I do not even own the face paint that later plays a part in this chapter. I do however put forward some claim to the situation I have put J. K. Rowling's characters into. _

Harry stormed into his office, robes billowing around him. He jerked the chair out and flopped down into it with a furious huff. The portraits had jerked awake when he came in and were quietly murmuring in their frames. Harry glared at them. Some of the portraits went silent, others left their frames for ones that he couldn't presently see and one glared right back.

"What, Potter, has something pricked that over-inflated ego of yours?" Snape sneered down at him from the wall opposite the desk.

Harry hissed wordlessly at him.

From some corner of the room Harry heard Slytherin wondering how the Potters had become parselmouths when it wasn't in their blood. He ignored it. He'd never actually been able to find the man's portrait and being laughed at as he searched for something only he could hear wasn't something he fancied at the moment.

"Well, Potter? Snake got your tongue or has someone finally realized that the world would be a better place if Potters were rendered mute?"

Harry turned away and glared at five portraits beside the desk. They stared back in varying states of curiosity, depression and boredom.

"What?" One asked defensively, "No reason to glare at us if the test went badly." The three of the other four nodded agreeably, the forth just stared at him.

He sat back in his swivel chair. That was true enough, he thought as he put his feet up on the desk. This sent up a storm of disapproving hisses from the remaining headmaster portraits. He flipped them off, "This is my desk, I bought it, brought it to this castle and it'll be removed when I die. If I want to put my feet on it it's my business."

"Harry, my boy, you know that which desk is not the question here. The others are simply concerned for the lack of respect that you have shown the position since you came back to Hogwarts after being accepted here."

Harry craned his head to look back at Dumbledore's portrait. He then turned the entire chair towards the man. Snape snorted. "Refusing to answer because that answer is yes, isn't it Potter, someone deflated that ego of yours and now you are going to sulk up here, alone, trying to re-inflate your big head."

"Why should I behave respectfully towards a position that I hold? Especially when I am very nearly alone."

The bored portrait spoke up. "Hadrian Severus Potter, don't take out your temper on poor Albus, just go and blow up something somewhere else. Or you could behave like the mature, respectable man you are and tell us what is wrong."

Harry scrubbed his face then yanked at his hair. "You know well enough what is wrong. If you want to say something about that, go ahead."

The painted man raised his eyebrows, "Really, Hadrian? Right here, in front of everyone?"

"Sure, maybe they will have some idea on what'll work." Harry waved a hand jerkily, the other still covering his face as he reclined in his desk chair."

The other four portraits looked a bit disturbed. The third portrait ventured a guess, "Your, ah, latest attempt to kill yourself failed?"

There was a moment of shocked silence in the Headmaster's office. Dumbledore looked appalled. "My boy, what would make you try to killed yourself?"

The fourth portrait spoke up, "You do remember that doesn't help anything right?"

Harry sighed, "Yes, but it felt better for a couple years."

The second portrait, the bored one, glared down over at the forth portrait then down at him. "And you hurt your family terribly, left your children- adults or not- as orphans, and did nothing to actually stop the curse."

Snape shoved his way into Dumbledore's frame, disgruntled murmurs in his wake. He glared down at Harry, eye narrowed, a vein throbbing visibly in his forehead, hands fisted, and breathing heavily. "Potter," his voice was low, soft as silk, and Harry didn't think he'd ever seen the man angrier. Even after being found in the man's memories, he'd never seen a more furious Snape. "Potter, what idiotic, insane and utterly asinine thing did I just hear?"

Harry opened his fingers, staring up at the portrait with one eye at the saddened Dumbledore and the utterly deranged looking Snape. "I tried to kill myself. Again. It didn't work. Again" He ground out through clenched teeth.

"Have you gone insane?" Harry raised an eyebrow as Snape started to bellow soundlessly; unaware he'd just been Silenced. When he paused to take a breath he didn't really need Dumbledore managed to pantomime having been Silenced to Snape. Snape pushed his way into the next portrait over to continue. He was bound and gagged in a moment by the second portrait. Dumbledore looked appalled and the other headmasters' portraits sent a hushed wave of whispers around the room. He waved desperately at Harry and Harry generously un-Silenced him. He turned to look at the second portrait.

"Harrison Wilford Potter! * How in Merlin's name did you cast in a painting?" The portrait in question ignored Dumbledore and gleefully poked the defenseless Snape's nose. The first Potter Portrait looked rather jealous and pushed into Harrison's portrait to poke Snape too.

Slytherin spoke up, "There are two requirements to being able to cast as a portrait." He paused to let the deeply disturbed portraits calm down.

"Who was that?" demanded Phineas Nigellus Black.

"I am Salazar Slytherin."

"You've actually got a portrait!" was the inspired response from an excitable Hufflepuff Headmistress.

"Indeed, as I-"

He was interrupted again. "Why have you never made yourself known before?"

"I had better things to do."

Harry relaxed a bit. Nothing like an entertaining shouting match to work off a bit of tension after all. And the portraits seemed to find the newly revealed Slytherin as annoying as he did. Snape interjected with an angry noise from behind his gag.

"As you were saying, Salazar, how is it possible to use magic in a painting?" Dumbledore spoke up again as he looked around the room for the man. The rest of the room quieted, shushing other Heads.

"There are two requirements to using a wand in a painting. First you must have been painted with your wand." The room suddenly became utter bedlam, everyone wanted to know how Harrison had a wand- whatever artists commissioned to make the portraits had never painted a wand before.

Harry Silenced nearly every portrait, causing Insta-sulk among several of the Heads. Slytherin continued, "Secondly, you must still be alive." Harry removed the silencing charm, wanting to hear the reaction. There was shocked silence before another round of whispers rushed around the room.

"Harrison, how are you alive? You would be nearly four hundred years old by now." The Potter Portrait in question raised an eyebrow and ceased tormenting Snape, who now sported several silver and green paint streaks in his hair and a rather artistically rendered flower across his nose in Gryffindor colors. "The same way the rest of the Potter series is."

Snape grunted from behind the gag. The first Potter removed it. Snape tried to bite him and received a purple peace symbol on his chin for his trouble. "What do you mean by that, you sorry, dunderheaded excuse for a Slytherin!"

"What else can I say? We are all alive."

"How do you have portraits, then? They only generate when a Headmaster (or Headmistress) dies." Dumbledore queried.

"A new Headmaster is linked to an empty canvas by blood. When the body with that blood dies a portrait is created on the canvas." Harry replied and stood up to pace.

"Are you saying that your soul is not connected to your body? That you created a Horcrux?" Dumbledore asks; lips thin, face pale, and twinkle gone from his painted eyes. Hushed, horrified whispers flew among the informed portraits and stringent demands were voiced by those who didn't.

"Yes but not exactly." Harry paused in his pacing by the window. He stared outside.

He hears a rustle of fabric, a Snape-ish grunt and a demand of "Explain, Potter." The click of teeth causes Harry to look over. Harrison looks smug as Al Potter holds Snape's head, the beginnings of a winding snake evident around Snape's ear... Al looks at Harry and shrugs, "He tried to bite again."

"The first thing you should understand is that Al Potter, Harrison and the rest don't really exist. They never did. They were all just amnesiac versions of the first Harry Potter- the Boy-Who-Lived- Version 1.0. So am I for that matter."

"You don't really seem amnesiac, Potter," Snape snarls.

Harry shrugs. "We get our memories back after the birth of our second son."

"Harry, is there something significant about the second son?" Dumbledore's eyes have not yet regained their twinkle but he certainly does not look as angry as he did when he thought Harry might have made a Horcrux.

Harry returned to his chair, the expression on his face for a moment making him look nearly as old as he felt. "My second son is always a stillborn."

"How can that be, Potter?" demands Snape, "When you yourself are a second son."

"Each life, when I heard that my son was dead I had a burst of accidental magic. That accidental magic jumpstarted the newborn's body and placed a piece of my soul within the child."

"It is a Horcrux then." Dumbledore, in his cold, righteous anger, looks much like the warrior that he once was.

Maybe," Harry admits, "But I've always had the impression that was a difficult sort of magic to do and then without the knowledge to do so, is it really a Horcrux?"

"What then would you call it then, Potter, if not a Horcrux?"

"I'm not sure."

Slytherin interjects, "Parsel-brat, have you murdered someone with in the last twenty-five years or so?"

Harry leans back. "To the best of my knowledge I've never actually murdered anyone, and I haven't killed anyone in this life yet; so no."

"It cannot be a Horcrux then."

"How can you know?" Dumbledore asks quietly.

"A sane person who regrets the necessity of killing will heal over time. A sane person who has killed for a- let us call it a good reason- for lack of a better term; will have less damage to the soul. Killing without the Killing Curse, will again, will cause less damage."

Harry breathes deeply and sighs, "Slytherin, how do you know this?"

"There was a craze of people making Horcruxes in my time and I studied them. Souls are a fascinating topic after all. I even invented a spell meant to view the soul. It didn't quite work the way I wanted, but it worked well enough to tell how much a soul was damaged and it the person being viewed had made a Horcrux. Aside from all that, it is quite impossible to make a Horcrux without several requirements. Your soul must be quite fractured, to the point that it is only holding together by the thinnest of threads, a very specific ritual that for best results should be repeated each time, and most of all you have to have the desire to make one."

"I have never knowingly, or at least willingly (if you count Voldie's resurrection), participated in any ritual. Even if you count Quirrell and the Basilisk and that backfiring spell of Voldemort's I have killed less than a double handful of sentient beings in any of my lives. And finally I have never wanted to be immortal, nor to have I attempted any method of immortality, much less the making of a Horcrux. It turned out so well for old Volds after all."

Harry took a seat facing his portraits. Snape was now sporting a toucan's coloring on his magically extended nose. He was also gagged again, seemingly to avoid having the enthusiastic artist bitten.

"It would be better if you stopped trying to find a way to kill yourself." The fifth portrait, the current Harry's father, chided him gently. It hurts everyone around you, even us. Just because we are older versions of yourself does not mean we stop being your father. We have happy memories of raising our second sons… And you remember them too."

Harry sighed and looked up at the many portraits. "Now you understand, more or less, the situation. Any suggestions?"

Someone behind him spoke up in a reedy voice. "What's so bad about immortality anyway? You even have a version of endless youth. Why would anyone want to end that?"

Each of the Potter Portraits mimicked the anger seen on the face of the living man. (Snape nearly had an eye put out by a forceful paint brush before the artist threw the tool at a neighboring painting in incoherent rage.) "What's wrong with that? What's wrong?" Each life I live is a live I have stolen from someone who should have been my son! Each additional life is mine because an innocent babe did not survive long enough to take even a single breath. Each life I live I miss my friends and family from previous lives. I cannot even distance myself from other people because by the time I remember how much I hurt I am already caught up in new ties and cannot leave. I cannot force my son to do it because Harry Potter always grows so very fond of people, he refuses to leave. When my sons would be young enough so I could force hem away from others, I find I cannot bring myself to visit such cruelty on a child. I talk my way out of it by telling myself that even if I pushed my younger self away he would simply find new people to grow close to." His furious shout had dwindled into something resembling a sob. "I cannot imagine anything more to do. I have tried having only one son- it left my one of my brother's raising my younger self, who was then shocked at the sudden change in personality in his son at the young age of twenty-seven. Much too young to be blamed on a midlife crisis. I couldn't figure out what to tell him. It took Verituserum for him to believe that I was still his son, even as I was also part of his brother's soul. He never forgave us taking the life of his child, and when he understood I would also take the lives of one of his grandchildren… He disowned me. He would accept my children into the family but not the second son. As his grandchild I couldn't understand why he hated the sight of me. As a father I understand all too well. I hate myself and my life. This immortality is a curse."

There was near silence in the office, save for a sound of the vigorous chewing of fabric. Harry ignored Snape's plight. One of the other Harry's would deal with it. _He_ was going to return to sulking.

*I can't say I have a really good reason to pick this name. Just imagine it's the name of one of the Potter's wives' fathers.

** Own notes: First portrait: not Albus Severus, but either his son or grandson. Second portrait: bored one, likely Slytherin, his father- fourth in the Harry sequence-killed himself in hopes of stopping the curse. Is also an artist, surprising his father as none of the Harry's before had shown artistic talent. This Harry (fifth) later encouraged his sons to find a place in the arts. Third Portrait: Hufflepuff (seventh in sequence), father of fourth Potter Headmaster. Forth- tried an experiment- had only one child- this resulted in the 'curse' skipping lines- one of his nephews becoming the new Harry. Fifth- 'father' to the current Harry.

Finished and posted 7/27/12.

_I'm not really sure quite how I feel about this chapter. I think I explained everything I wanted to, and could even end the story here. But I do not want this to be an overly angsty fic- there are already many of those. I have a solution of sorts, but I'd like to hear what you, the reader, have to say. If you have any ideas, I'd love to hear them. My idea feels a bit flimsy. I do intend to start crossing this story over here, in another chapter or two- have Harry make short, one shot-ish appearances as heroes or possibly sidekicks from other books, movies, etcetera as I am inspired._


	3. 3: Albus Severus Potter aka Sam Witwicky

**The Stillborn Potter Syndrome**

A Sneak peek at Chapter 3, the beginning of the crossovers.

7/30/12

Sam Witwicky shifted uneasily. He was in the infirmary of an aircraft carrier, which would, he was sure, make most non-military people a bit uneasy. However the source of his nervousness was not that. Rather, it was because his father was coming. His dad was already here, in the infirmary as well getting looked over in a private room by the doctor. But his birth father was coming from England. Legally he might be Samuel Archibald Witwicky but his birth father made sure he knew something of his other family as well.

He loved his father and certainly wasn't afraid of him but he also didn't know what his father would think of the current situation. The Autobots and the alien language swirling around his brain, the entire debacle which should have ended a while ago, but now he'd definitely need to tell his father what was going on. He'd gotten out of it after Mission City because his father had been on an Auror mission and hadn't seen the limited report that had been sent quietly to the British government and then to the British Ministry of Magic. His father's secretary had sent him a note asking if he was alright and he'd responded by asking him not to tell his father and claimed he'd do that himself. And while he fully intended on doing so, regardless of the secrecy statements he'd signed, it just hadn't happened.

~"*"~

_Enjoy this sneak peek and let me know what you think! There is a poll on my profile about updating. Tell me what you are interested in reading. I will take it into account when deciding which story to work on._

_Please keep in mind this is a draft and is subject to change. This is likely to appear in the next chapter but may not as I keep writing, depending on if it works or not. I may use my other idea here instead._

_Anyone interested in Betaing? – Azure Gryphon_


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